So that Melissa can have a good night’s sleep
Over in the comments, Melissa said:
Resident botanist here. What are the little green flowers? Are they falling off a tree, or growing on a stem arising from the soil? Do they have leaves on the plant? Give me more pictures–I’m compelled to know . . . I may not sleep . . . I mean, really . . . Don’t just put up a picture like that and then go talk about writing . . . c’mon.
They’re not coming from the ground, they are definitely from UP. And they’ve dropped those little green flowers in the hundreds, where I found them on the ground and on my bench.
Here they are, still on the plant:
they pop off the branch easily
Upon investigation, I find that they are a vine.
in vertical mode
I believe we have more than one sort clambering up the trees at the back border of the condo property.
yep. Vines.
Lots of vines in the back margin, including one example that had been in place so long that its main stalk was two inches in diameter. It was strangling our beloved cedar tree, so I executed it on advice of a pal who used to be a landscape architect.
beheaded in a good cause
I can’t swear that the monster vine is the same as the pretty-green-flowers vine, since the monster no longer blooms, but only exists as a macabre skeleton plant embracing our cedar. But, could be…
June 1st, 2011 at 9:28 pm
Well, this is the second time I’ve tried to post a comment–my net connection is slow tonight!
I’ll have to admit that I’m no expert in the flora of the northeast, since I’m from the other side of the continent. You live around the Boston area somewhere? I live in western Oregon. This is a great challenge! We’ll see if I can meet it. . .
June 1st, 2011 at 9:44 pm
I’m going to guess a bittersweet, either American or Oriental. If it’s the Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), then we have the classic case of a science fiction writer suffering an alien invasion.
June 2nd, 2011 at 6:24 am
Melissa —
Once you said “bittersweet”, I did a little looking up, and I’m thinking you’re right. And probably Oriental Bittersweet, which is known to engulf and kill trees. That’s exactly why I had to chop the vines that were wrapped around our cedar. Seriously, those two-inch-thick vines were completely twisted around the trunk, ran all the way up to the crown, where every autumn they put out red berries.
It was actually pretty, and attracted lots of birds, but my landscaping pal said to kill the vines, or the tree would end up strangled.
June 3rd, 2011 at 12:12 am
Wow, I’m impressed that it would kill a tree. It doesn’t look all that fierce in the photos.
June 3rd, 2011 at 6:25 am
Melissa –
I’m surprised, too. We always enjoyed the way it looked, with the leaves going yellow in autumn, and the pretty berries mixed in among the cedar branches. But when our landscape architect pal saw it and pointed out the way the thick stem was wrapped tightly all around the trunk and branches, and said that eventually (not immediately, but eventually) it would damage and possibly kill the tree, I got out the pruning shears and executed it. That tree is one of the things that keeps our portion of the yard from being just another condo patch of grass and bushes.
June 3rd, 2011 at 10:07 pm
Facinating, it actually girdles the tree over time. It’s rather odd isn’t it, that some species have evolved in such a way that they can kill the very organism that provides structural support.